A company or brand Web strategy should include considerations for how people will search, share, and involve through the content. In addition to integrating a corporate site with social outposts, it should also be integrated withing itself by layering: community building with editorial impact, and marketing.

1/3 editorial impact - using what the Poetae Novae called labor limae, make the content efficient while still effective; put usefulness front and center without overwhelming, and take the point of view of the customer, what they think, want (or worry) about. Content that educates, entertains, and empowers

1/3 community building - working on what in social media we have come to refer to as conversation, engagement, building relationships and connections; thinking about ways to answer common inbound questions creatively, allowing comments on blogs are two examples

1/3 marketing principles - making room for valuable calls to action, the bread and butter of why we buy and how we sell; competitive comparisons, offers, and compelling reasons to ask for more information with a sales rep

I have this skit I do in the part of my workshop where I talk about content.

It's your brand hatching, your brand on content, then people on content. It comes from the Web presence of the future, something I wrote a good four years ago here. You can see the images here.

Each of the five complete rewrites and redesigns of a corporate Website I worked on during my career on the client side was both exciting and challenging for a variety of reasons.

They required learning the business cycle, language, and context of the corresponding industry -- and of the people most likely to want to hire those products and services to do the jobs they needed done.

Speaking clearly about the organization and what its products and services offered customers, as well as the customer' voices themselves in support and evidence of our work.

The project is exponentially complex when the organization has a complex service or product taxonomy and different lines of business with complementary, yet distinct needs. When the product mix is highly technical and lives in a context that changes constantly, you better have a plan to refresh that content frequently.

Taking the point of view of the organization, you are writing the content as a marketing conversation. You work from a few personas, or representations of the readers and customers you want to attract, who they are, the job they're looking to do specifically.

The structure of the page(s) is generally build around three simple questions:

why you are here -- based upon what the customer wants to do

what job are you looking to hire this company/product/service to do -- entertain, solve, empower

how the job we do connects with the job you need/want done -- this talks to the service (or product) and how it is delivered, through education, information, interaction

Many Web sites are still organized around a company's capabilities. Many presentations and proposals revolve around what a company (or agency) does and how it does it. It is about what the company does as long as it is in relationship to what your customer wants and needs.

With social media, and layering in the community building functionality, you now have the ability to do much more. Many a corporate budget is still allocated to search -- organic and paid.

If you have a great product, then the customer wants to play with it, learn about what it does, how it does what it does. In the case of an iMac, your customer may be content to just look at it, at how it's built, for example.

When that is the case, you put the sex appeal front and center, it is what the customer wants. How many of you work at Apple? How many other products have such draw that people actually go to the stores to see and interact with the product in person?

Build a Bear is one such store. How many others? There are a few. Why I love working with products -- here's what it looks like, here's the job it does. Many of us are in the services industry. How do you involve there?

The Web site of the future may be organized completely in thirds without needing to separate them in a blog, a forum, a customer idea space, and the corporate brochure-ware. Part editorial, part community, and part marketing weaved through the site.

People on content search, share, and involve. Are you building for that?

Where did you get that? Is a familiar question for me. The other day I was walking to my car when the woman in the couple across the street pointed at me and said "I want a coat just like that one". I know exactly where I bought it in Modena.

In the now rare instances when I am at a store, people often ask for my advice -- does this look good on me? What do you think, should I go for the other one? Yeah, there's a couple of apps for that, too.

Due in part to my cultural upbringing -- the Made in Italy thing -- and in part to the ability to connect the dots on composition -- putting together things creatively in a way that results pleasing to many, I have been able to mix and match creatively and on a budget anything, from attire to home decor.

Social influences is part of that. Which is why tools that allow people to display what they read, listen to, and buy are making such strong inroads. For example, my boards on Pinterest are a mix of things I have done, and things I might like to do.

When it comes to influence, the strongest lever any brand has is the direct appeal -- give people enough visual and emotional appeal, with just enough information an individual needs to convince themselves, and you're there.

It is a big deal for brands. Because the number of people who ask that question to a friend, colleague, or neighbor has gone up exponentially and now, thanks to social networks and apps, we see it.

Brands that are starting to pay serious attention to this trend, the "I'm putting my money on it" kind, are already realizing its benefits.

For the kinds of investments we're talking about, companies want surer bets. What would a more accurate hit ratio look like on your balance sheet? Would it not be more profitable to court the right customers?

The biggest value for content creators, marketers, sales professionals, publishers, and anyone working with brands is in the ability to literally pin down their audience for long enough to make that connection at the moment they are ready to buy (ideally a little earlier, when they intend to do it, if your brand is not a slam dunk).

The new privacy policy – which Google contends will allow it to better target ads — goes into effect on March 1.

In a press release, the company said it may combine the information users submit under their email accounts with information from other Google services or third parties.

What people do and share on the social networking site Google+, Gmail and YouTube will be combined to create a more three-dimensional picture of consumers’ likes and dislikes, according to reports. Google did not return calls seeking comment.

That information is more valuable than you know. Even as Google says they will not sell it, they trade it and share it.

Trading better promises?

Organizations are changing their policies so they can have more data to trade -- and make a profit on. Is this trade going to be about making better promises? Or will Google be the new Facebook?

That would be a shame. There is a fine line between providing a better experience and going wild on recommendations based upon a whim search for a blog post. Indeed I use many Google products, which makes it easy to keep an eye on me and many others like me.

Good trade is that which allows a company to make better promises. The biggest factor influencing changes in the way customers buy is trust. Where is the line between useful and creepy? Speaking clearly is a first step.

I do wonder about this point. Is the new, combined, Google privacy policy clear to you? Did you read it? Does it define well your ability to make corrections and changes as needed? There are some things one cannot change, so if you goofed on a critical piece of information, well, that's the way it is.

How about the dashboard? Do you understand where the information is aggregated from and how to change your settings? Do you care to, or it doesn't matter? I confess I'm going to need extra help in some entries there. And I spend a lot of time using, testing, and reviewing technologies.

The changes in the way customers buy should impact the way companies actually conduct business, not just their data collection policies. When speaking clearly is real and is executed well, as in acting appropriately, you make your business enduring.

Because that's where the new opportunities are -- in the flux of understanding your customers and actually helping them do what they want to do.

How do you do that? This is my passion and work -- connecting the talk with the walk, brands with customers (and their friends), I call it marketing that makes business sense. If this is something that interests you, contact me today.

This post was inspired by a Google+ thread I started a couple of days ago. In it, I asked:

Out of office or "I'm too busy to answer" email forms - what's your take on them? I don't use them. After two strikes with someone I'm done (because, frankly, we're all busy). Curious as to your approach.

That question felt a bit like a cop out, though. Because there are times when I've had to use an auto-responder.

For example, when I knew my company slow VPN would be too slow and not work from a specific place I was on vacation. Rather than let a customer down with me, I preferred to connect them to a team member who could help them right away.

What if you don't have a team? If you work alone, or wear many hats, you know too well you don't scale. Spend an extra hour helping a client or say you're traveling, and you won't be able to answer an email right away.

What if the email you got look a bit spammy? And yet it could be a legitimate attempt to connect, just poorly executed.

I thought the topic would warrant additional conversation. Since this is a site where we tackle how we think about what we do, here are some executions for consideration and discussion.

Three connective ways to use and "out of office" responder

Many of the reactions in the G+ thread also indicated an auto-responder is a turn off, which means the first connective option is:

#1 To actually respond

It could be just one quick like that acknowledges the email and sets expectations on when you'll be able to deal with the request, or why you will not.

You can be nice about it. DJ Waldow suggested something like "it may take me a bit longer than normal to bet back to you..." say you're on your way to Australia. You will miss a day on the way over.

Also think about how to construct your "sorry, no" response in a way that is kind to the person even as you're turning down the request and want to make sure that comes across clearly.

Think you're too busy to answer? Some of the best responses I received, even best "sorry, no" messages, are from very busy C-level people and entrepreneurs.

A note to those initiating the email send -- think about the person on the receiving end. Your response rate depends on the type of message YOU send as well. Your message is connective when it's relevant, timely, and it shows you've done your homework.

#2 To make it useful

If you must have a message, include useful information as a gift for the person receiving it.

Here my goal is to take a look at adjusting the execution so that the message comes across as connective instead of dismissive.

The typical corporate message, based upon Outlook or Lotus Notes templates, usually reads something like this (I made all the info up):

I will be out of the office starting 01/30/2012 and will not return until 02/06/2012.

If need be, please call my assistant Mark Kent at 1 646 000 000 or Corporate Director Suzie Smith at 1 646 111 1111 (Note: I will have limited or no email access during most of this trip)

Well, you know who to call "if needs be". I've also seen "your message is important to us", which is an innocent expression used inappropriately so many times that it now basically means "forget about it". Is that the message you want to send?

There is nothing wrong with your email program. Do not attempt to adjust your inbox. I am controlling transmission. If I wish to make it louder, I will bring up more email. If I wish to make it softer, I will archive your old messages. I will control the horizontal. I will control the vertical. For the next few days, sit quietly and I will present all that you see and hear at the Blue Sky Factory Email Marketing Conference. I repeat: there is nothing wrong with your email program. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to... my out of office message.

If you need assistance with either Blue Sky Factory business or personal business of mine, please contact:

I was at a dinner in New York City hosted by Human 1.0 the other night. We were there to learn about Big Data and a big part of the conversation around the table shifted to talking about intent.

While social technology has given us effective ways to express our “likes”, often of things we know and have done, it has yet to address the other side of the interest graph -- the things we discover either trough trusted recommendations and reviews or on our own.

These are the wants -- items we want to buy, read, or listen to/experience at some point in the future.

Digital intent, behavioral targeting, and relationships

Social data is having a disruptive impact on the advertising and marketing technology industries. Right now, the conversation and tools are revolving around optimizing our current understanding of personalization.

Making things custom, like a Seville Row suit, has gotten cheaper and simpler. Simple is not the same as easy when there are many competing priorities in marketing departments.

Big data is opening a whole new can of worms in other directions, like privacy, and disliked behavioral targeting practices around pricing.

We are nonetheless at the dawn of a new era in relationships brought about by social technologies. This creates a whole new dimension to the saying -- wherever you go, there you are. It's valid for brands as it is for individuals.

Saturday Three

The three stories that caught my eye this week are:

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This post on Why Digital Intent Matters by Taylor Davidson was born as an article on his premium newsletter and he's since filled out some of the details. Mining intent is the new gold rush. Davidson says:

The usage of “intent” is a powerful conceptual idea, and while it still appears to be more of a buzzword than something people really know how to leverage, we’re coming closer to seeing it have a real impact on marketing and advertising.

The real applications of the web’s intent engines for marketing and advertising are still to come. Matching intent engines to advertising and ecommerce is a big opportunity, and I believe that’s one reason why we’ve seen millions flow into the ecommerce space.

It’s never been possible to leverage intent in this way, at this scale, across so many different products and services, worldwide. And that’s why “intent” is something we’re going to hear a lot more about.

Intent as direction resonates. It will be interesting to see how marketers deal with overwhelm and the intent they select to influence action.

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What are merchants' dreams made of that become nightmares for consumers? According to The Next Web, Behavioral Pricing. Sensationalist titles aside, there are some interesting thoughts in the article:

We’ve already seen online merchants make preliminary attempts at this.

[...] When the New York Times unveiled its digital subscriptions, it decided to charge $15 per month to subscribe on your clunky old Blackberry, but $20 per month to subscribe on your iPad.

Yet, it doesn’t cost the New York Times more to deliver content to the iPad. Instead the assumption was that you, the owner of a $500 tablet, would be more willing to pay than your average smartphone user.

You hardly need to be online to see examples of dynamic pricing. It has already been adopted by sports teams and entertainment shows, for example Broadway. However, that was more around product supply/demand than around people wants or intent. We won't mention airlines here... it is, after all, a two-way street.

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Ignore the human element of marketing at your own peril say Bob Garfield and Doug Levy on AdAge. Demographics, which much of mass media was focused on, are about similarities, while people are about difference. And social technologies bring the promise of helping those brands willing to go there strengthen bonds with their customers.

In the Relationship Era, the big winners will be in Sustainable, whose habitues typically spend little on advertising -- because they don't need it. By contrast, indifference is expensive and hostility unaffordable.

[...] Clearly, those whom we trust and adore, we trust and adore a lot. It's human nature. Luckily, while the digital revolution was undermining Mass it was also supercharging human nature.

Social media have taken the stolid, dependable old tortoise -- word-of-mouth -- and transformed it into countless hares, multiplying like, well, hares. And they're zipping around not just the beauty parlor and the saloon but Facebook, Twitter and Yelp at the speed of "send."

Levy is the CEO of Imc2, the agency that commissioned survey data on trust and plotted it against market share for leading consumer marketers on page 2 of the article.

The results in the trust/transactions quadrant show brands in four categories: reluctant, limited, emotional, and sustainable.

Under sustainable are Apple, Costco, Southwest Airlines and, in the upper-most-right-hand corner, Amazon.

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Will you save this article with the intent to read it later? There are tools to do that, which is part of the big data dump that is about to submerge marketers.

No matter how you slice it, execution is about relationships -- connecting ideas and people is key to meaning and superior performance.

Often people will hear back from me in the wee hours because I get creative at around 4pm and then stay in flow for hours after that. By the time I realize I'm cold from the heating going to low for the night, it's way past bed time.

When I get into flow, I shut everything else down and experience deep concentration, from which I draw creativity and a sense of well being.

I was thinking about that experience at lunch, as I was listening again to this TED Talk by Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi, the man with the most challenging name for me to pronounce (he'd probably say the same for mine).

One consideration from his extensive work is the question -- how do you feel when something goes well? It's where you get to play in the spot between arousal and control.

Creativity is enhanced when I suspend System 2#, or the deliberate, analytical and consciously effortful mode of reasoning colored with judgement, long enough not to talk myself out of exploring possibilities with System 1, which proposes through intuition.

There is more to that than a simply dualistic explanation. It will need to do for now so we can regain a sense of order and proceed with the question I posit in the post.

What keeps leaders up at night?

A short couple of years back, we had a series of live conversations with CEOs where we asked specifically that question looking to peel back the business layers and get to the philosophy of what drives leaders.

For example, we learned with Pernille Lopez, who was at the time President of IKEA North America how she was living and working with the policies she helped champion when she was head of HR for IKEA.

By the way, there is a reason why we say "growth curve" -- it behaves more like a cycle.

The issues that kept these leaders up at night were all about people -- employees, customers, partners take the lion share.

By the time you get to those positions, you are skilled in one domain (at least), which means you were self-driven and in control while getting there. Staying there is a completely new ballgame.

It starts with learning to manage yourself differently. It's the same for entrepreneurs, by the way.

When change happens

At around the same time, David Pottruck, who at the time had just been fired as CEO of Charles Schwab, shared with attendees of the Wharton Leadership Forum that when he went to sleep he slept like a baby -- he woke up every two hours crying.

Here's how it went down -- after a sudden executive session of the board, Schwab met with Pottruck (emphasis mine):

The words that followed ended a 20-year corporate career in less than 20 seconds. "I'm sorry," Pottruck remembers Schwab saying, "but the board has met and decided that they have lost confidence in the direction of the company and in your leadership. We've decided to make a change and have me come back to the office." Effective immediately, Pottruck was to step down, and Schwab would become CEO again.

[...]

In a heartbeat, David Pottruck's life -- and identity -- was forever changed.

In Good Business, a book Czikszentmihalyi authored after the widely-read Flow, he reports that the definition of success offered by good business leaders includes both helping others succeed and meeting challenges/being challenged.

Lack of environmental feedback is part of it. CEOs live a business reality where everyone they work with reports into them, and the people they report into they don't work with. When the two are in tension with each other, everything possible must be done to regain a sense of order.

This tension is now the new normal due to the escalated complexity of modern organizations still structured for 20th Century business and reluctantly dipping toes in the collaborative nature of 21st Century reality.

Regardless of how change happens and to whom it does, we're all called to respond. We all mourn the death of something we held ourselves to -- we're connected to that identity for better or worse. We feel like a failure when we fail.

Successful people learn to let go of the past as quickly as they can by asking a different question -- what contributes to a life worth living? How can I do that now?

What keeps you up at night?

Chaos and uncertainty can be very uncomfortable feelings. They make us cling to the worn path of answers that worked before.

Going back to Czikszentmihalyi's TED Talk, beyond apathy, a challenge becomes daunting when we experience worry and anxiety and feel a loss of control over how we're going to tackle it.

When our reference points are taken away, we experience helplessness, the imaginary friend that keeps us away from flow.

Ironically, it is by freezing in place and thinking the worst, or constantly looking back at what we had (or thought we had) that we gain the least clues to begin to change how we think about what we're doing now.

And we're at a loss in using creativity to make the situation better than it was before, or make a better promise altogether.

It's late at night, and the movie is all happening in our head. The brain doesn't know if it's real or imagined#. That's also the good news, and there is a whole field of research on creative visualization to back it up.

So there you are, it's night time and there's a lot on your mind and in your brain (we'll leave the relationship between those two to science/another day) -- what keeps you up? It feels real to you, or you wouldn't be up thinking about it.

Can you shift the focus to a different question that very moment? Who would you be if your identity weren't so closely vested in what was or what you think it might be?

Maybe not. Maybe the best antidote that very moment is a head fake -- taking a small step in a different direction, the field of possibility. It's waiting for you.

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Two tactics I use to get there that give me just enough sensory feedback to get unstuck:

a very small task that engages the creative side of my brain. For example, designing a couple of slides in a presentation deck for which I already did the conceptual heavy lifting

catching up on my reading or inspiration videos I saved for later in a special folder. For example, a TED Talk, re-reading a good story, or poetry.

This is how I reconnect with the feeling of doing and purpose.

What keeps you up at night and how do you get yourself to go from obsessing about it to contributing the solution (or preparing the ground for a more fertile moment)?

There are two aspects to doing business -- believing in what you're doing, and verifying that it works for your customers and clients.

To succeed, you need to do both, relentlessly.

When it's only about keeping the faith, you may be worshiping at the altar of hope (or its shady cousin, ego), and you can't trade that credibly. Test your idea before you go down the heavy investment route. Is there a market for it?

Base your trade on demanding proof alone, and you take away the specialness of drawing from a deeper source of inspiration and passion. The specialness is what will allow you to stay the course and weather (some of) the ups and downs of running a business (or even a program).

Being a contribution

Today I had lunch with my printer. You may think we live digitally now and there really isn't a point in still printing stuff.

Aside from a still strong direct response business, you may want to look into required labels, decals, forms, bulletins, and privacy information leaflets as examples of applications on the regulatory side. On the fun side, consider posters and apparel for conferences.

I met Mark a dozen years ago. He was printing stationery -- letterhead, envelopes, business cards, labels -- for a company that hired me to help with marketing and communications. When I started, he came in to introduce himself and offer his services for anything I needed.

He meant it. We started working together just on letterhead reorders. I was impressed by both his knowledge of the printing process, including raw materials and choosing the most appropriate printing methods, as in most cost effective and time saving. I quickly started calling him for other jobs.

As a policy, the company always bid jobs to at least two service providers to make sure we had gotten the best bang for the buck. Other providers started pushing back on providing transparency into their pricing structure for fear they would lose work.

Mark not only provided transparent bids, he also met with us in person regularly to figure out how we could combine jobs creatively, thus saving us a bundle over the whole order.

Where other providers kept sending their lump sum quotes as they had always done, I know Mark put considerable time into helping to re-imagine how we could achieve the same effect under sometimes more compressed timelines and deliver a quality product.

Take it or leave it

I want to make sure it's clear -- other printer reps also had passion for their work and were knowledgeable.

They just didn't have enough of either to get past an additional question about a potential order. Or when we needed to work more creatively to come up with a solution.

When the pressure was applied to me and I needed to make miracles with a smaller budget, I would just see the passion for the work disappear without sufficient proof to convince me that there were no alternatives.

Suggesting a change in scope of work, or looking at achieving the same goal differently was not something they seemed hungry to do.

And there was something else -- when the direct mail job got delayed, there were all kinds of excuses ready for why someone else didn't come through...

Resilience and flexibility do add up

We often talk about resilience in the same sentence with the word leader, because those who posses this quality -- both businesses and individuals -- end up leading, even as they may not have started this way.

Add flexibility in the way you think about what you do and you now have a very powerful combination to do good trade and make better promises.

Because he was flexible in the way he conducted business, and resilient in the face of needing to supply proof in competitive bids, Mark went from just printing letterhead, which we used more and more rarely as a company, to getting purchase orders for our entire printing needs.

During five to seven months in the busy season we would do up to three mailers to thousands in each segment per week. It was crazy busy for us, and for him (we weren't his only customer). Yet, he was always just a phone call away and he would drop in to check job specs in person.

And he saved us a tidy bundle in addition to taking care of things when he said he would. In turn, his account with us grew considerably.

Earning and keeping trust

Soon, we started calling Mark into meetings with other providers for specialized jobs like product labeling so he could work with us and them to make those processes more efficient.

We relied not just on his domain expertise. Time and time again, he demonstrated his word was good, that we could trust him.

We stopped bidding jobs out. He kept winning those bids anyway, and when you get used to a certain level of service, anything less doesn't measure up.

At this point you could start relaxing your standards and getting a bit complacent. The passionate rarely do that. They are constantly and relentlessly pursuing a better trade.

And there's something else.

Mark never tried to bite more than he could chew. If he didn't know something, he would research it and report back. If he couldn't deliver a product of the highest quality, he wouldn't bid on it. In fact, he would even suggest someone who would do a better job.

That's how you keep the trust you've earned.

Trading better

To this day, whenever someone asks me for the name of a good printer, I refer Mark. Because I know he won't let me down -- directly or indirectly. I am not alone.

When he went out on his own last year founding Outlook Printing Solutions, every one of his customers with one exception followed him.

He got so busy fulfilling requests, that he's getting around to thinking about marketing now -- a year later.

Entrepreneurs know that you reach a critical point where you need to make some decisions on either growing and scaling the business, or staying with a niche, and so on.

Leading from any chair

This is something Ben Zander and I have in common -- we both believe people can lead from any chair. And something else -- that collaboration is very powerful. It creates a waterfall effect of good will and positive context that create the conditions for success.

Then success begets success in a way that touches all involved with a positive vibe. This is where people say -- do something you're passionate about, and the money will come.

How does Mark get most of his business? Through word of mouth.

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Hope my story will help you see how it's done.

Zero sum games produce zero in the end. If you want to add multiples of zero to your balance sheet, you need to practice being a contribution.

Keep the faith that doing things right is the right thing to do, and verify that you have indeed done right by your customers.

When I met Stan Phelps for coffee a little over a year ago, I learned for the first time there was a term -- lagniappe -- that meant a small gift given to a customers by a merchant at the time of purchase.

It cannot be faked of forced, for it to work it must feel real.

Our conversation on the research work he was doing for his first book, What's Your Purple Goldfish?(Amazon affiliate link), reminded me of the local toy store growing up.

The owner always had a little something set aside for us. Can you imagine? Three little kids going in with their savings to get one toy to share, and him beaming with joy while giving us the little extra.

This book started as a post in 2009, which then became the Purple Goldfish Project and the Marketing Lagniappe blog. The project was an ambitious attempt to crowd-source 1,001 examples of marketing lagniappe.

The book is now a reality so get your copy and find out how to win customers and influence word of mouth.

Fact: It costs ten times more to acquire a new customer than it takes to upsell a current one.

Marketing is changing. In fact, I'd say we're coming full circle to where we started -- in service to customers.

In the first part of Purple Goldfish, Stan talks about the value of the gift economy, explains why both purple and goldfish, and shares stories that help drive home the gesture of lagniappe.

In Part II, we learn about the five ingredients or RULES of a Purple Goldfish through examples:

the power of primacy and recency -- we often think of first impression, and rarely about our last or parting moment

standing behind your product

pay it forward

thank you's / follow up's

added service

waiting

convenience

special needs

handling mistakes

The book also addresses the role of technology in changing marketing.

According to Phelps, a lagniappe economy is where there is an exchange of goods and services for an exact value (market economy), plus a little unexpected extra that is given for good measure (gift economy).

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We need to get back to actually making things. As I read story after story in the book, I suddenly realized they are all about doing something, instead of just talking about it.

There is more to it. It's about speaking clearly and being apPROpriate to the situation at hand, in the present moment.

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Don't miss the complimentary Webinar with Stan Phelps about the concept of lagniappe tomorrow at 1pm. Details here.

While we've been sharing examples of creative content strategy executions for a couple of years here, it's easy to forget that the rest of the business world may still be wrestling with different issues.

The truth about social media adoption, according to the results of a survey conducted by Penton Marketing Services* is that many B2B (business to business) marketers are frustrated and less than satisfied with the performance of their website, social, search marketing and sales conversion efforts.

This is especially true in small and mid-sized companies where marketing professional might wear multiple hats—sometimes even a sales hat—and might work with limited budgets and resources in highly vertical, niche industry sectors.

Website goals and performance

The core of a company online presence is its Website. As detailed in the report, budget allocations for Websites are set aside to achieve (goals):

Websites are not being optimized. Only 29 percent of respondents have employed meta tags and 27 percent have a link building strategy.

Social media adoption

Among those who have social media outposts, Facebook, at 90 percent, is by far the most widely used networks, followed by Twitter at 53 percent, and LinkedIn at 47 percent.

The reasons for not doing more or better are outlined in the chart above:

37% say there isn't enough time to dedicate to it

35% don't think it is critical for the business

26% lack resources

26% don't know how to measure its effectiveness, aren't sure it would be valuable

19% are uncertain about how to begin

13% are concerned about customer privacy issues

Plus, a combined 63 percent are still not aware of what is being said about their company. While 6 percent said they're extremely satisfied with their current social media strategy, 10 percent said they're dissatisfied and the great majority falls in the middle, either neutral or just "satisfied".

There are also gaps in integration. More information and charts in the report (requires form fill out to download).

Demand creation and lead nurturing

Having spent many years of my corporate career in B2B organizations, I'm keenly aware of the longer sales cycles due to higher cost structures for products and services and that many marketers are tight with resources and budgets.

Where to start?

My strategy was looking to shorten the sales cycle and help support referrals. Which is why I employed inbound marketing to create demand by attraction into lead nurturing programs. This is a chart I used at Confab2011 when talking about content is a business asset:

In this interview I did with Kristina Halvorson, CEO Brain Traffic, we talked about content strategy. What makes it tick, quoting from the post, is the nitty gritty and details of why and how:

What’s difficult—and what regularly derails even the most well-intentioned content marketing initiatives—is actually figuring out the answers to far more complicated (and, oftentimes, less sexy!) questions that take into consideration workflow and governance: the parts that will make our content marketing plans achievable, effective, and sustainable:

Why are we creating this content? Is it just so we can have more content, or are our efforts tied to specific business objectives and user goals?

What content do we have to work with? Is it any good?

Who is the content for? What do they want and need? Do we know this for sure, or are we making assumptions? (Assumptions are the enemy of all marketing strategies!)

Who will create the content? What are the required skill sets?

How much time will it take to create and maintain the content? Do we have it?

By what standards and metrics will we measure the content’s success?

Who is empowered to say “no” to requests for new or different content?

What happens to the content once it’s published? (This speaks to the “launch it and leave it” mentality that results in bloated websites, dead microsites, and abandoned social media campaigns.)

It’s these questions that really get at the heart of content strategy: the questions that address not just the product (or content) components, but really dig into the people components that are required to make any sustainable content initiative a success.

It's about the people

Because they are the places where engineers, scientists, and many more specialists and subject matter experts reside, B2B organizations stand to benefit the most from the smart use of content to attract buyers in like mind and profession categories.

Humans have a fundamental need to be consulted, engaged, to exercise their knowledge (and thus power), and no other medium that came before [the web] has been able to tap into that as effectively. [Paul Ford]

That means if we start by providing a child his first bike at 4-years-old and continue through the retirement bike, we will collect $12,500 in fulfilling all of the cyclist’s lifetime needs.

But to actually sell an individual that many bikes to hit the goal of $12,500, we must win their business for life.

We must develop a trusting relationship with the customer from the first encounter and provide them with such an incredible experience, extraordinary service, and attention to detail that they come back time and again.

If we’re extraordinarily successful in doing this, that lifetime customer also brings us business from their children, relatives, and circle of friends.

When confronted by a choice between focusing on the stuff you make and paying extreme care to the way you deliver your service, choose "and" the superior experience.

People want to be able to reach out and grab things whenever it suits them, and any business could be lulled into complacency by delivering just convenience. Yet what makes a huge difference in (customer) relationships, private and public, goes well beyond that.

The $1,200 question

I've been thinking about a fairly intangible product of deliberate practice for organizations that makes a huge difference in how they're perceived as well as why they execute: culture.

In the manifesto, Zane provides an example of honoring the company's return policy with a full refund, no questions asked, as one of the moments of truth.

Because let's face it, you can craft the most beatiful core values statement and frame it for everyone to look at. It is only when you do it that they actually see it -- in action.

Good pick up lines

I like a really good pick up line, I bet you do as well. Zane employees are encouraged to do their homework and use the 25-minute retail window they have judiciously.

Instead of the typical "duh!" line -- can I help you? They approach each in store interaction from either a stance of curiosity and interest (new customer) or armed with information about a returning customer and ready to pick up where you left off.

This kind of customized approach opens the door for the Zane’s employee to connect with the customer on an emotional level, and the ability to fulfill a lifetime of purchases becomes much more possible.

It is this ind of culture that prompts the employee who makes the occasional slip up to pick up the tab as Greg did after forgetting a customer's Valentine's Day request to surprise her husband.

True meaning of priceless

Is exactly this -- not putting a specific dollar amount on the value of a trusted relationship and letting it accrue over time as potential.

When you as a business see a customer as a relationship opportunity, you get out of transaction mindset and into being in the moment and in conversation with them, actually listening and doing what needs to be done.

One of Zane's Cycle business practices is to give customers parts that cost less than $1 for free.

We tracked our giveaways over the course of one year and discovered that the total cost was $86. For $86, we were able to help 450 customers and create a positive lasting impression while doing so. I would say that was a great $86 investment.

The other good move is offering a 90-day price protection guarantee. On one hand you don't feel you're being nickel and dimed, on the other you're reassured you're getting the lowest possible price for that model.

Making better customer promises comes with lifetime service including fixing flat tires and lifetime parts guarantees.

When you’re looking at the lifetime value of a customer, or $12,500, a $6 tube is nothing.

How many CEOs do you know who post their personal email address right under their product/service guarantees? This is the true meaning of priceless.

How much is a lifetime customer worth to your business?

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Culture seems like such a soft word, doesn't it? Because it's something you are (or become) as a result of what you do, it is what creates the context for the exceptional customer experience Zane describes.

Zane’s Cycles is a $15 million dollar bicycle business in Connecticut.

Conversation Agent

Conversation Agent focuses on business, technology, digital culture, and customer psychology. At Conversation Agent LLC, I help organizations and brands that want to build better customer experiences tell a new story.